Meal plan for February 23rd – March 1st

In memorium: the industrial bottle I have used for the last eight years for my homemade surface spray, finally bit the dust last night. I feel comfortable that I got my $6 worth out of it. I went right out and got myself another one post haste. We’ll see if I can stretch this one to nine years.

Jack has a loose tooth and is spending all his waking hours wiggling it, and it is causing me to throw up in my mouth about 391 times a day. YUCK!!!!

Last week I mentioned I was going to try to make a shark toothfairy pillow. Well, I tried. Tried.

It isn’t perfect, but it was free, and the toothfairy will be able to locate the tooth and leave the cash safely. The body is made out of an old pair of Jack’s jeans, and the red mouth (aka exploding herpes as Troy calls it), was leftover from some random Christmas thing a few years ago. The body is stuffed with quilt scraps that I keep in a bin for just such an occasion.

Because one never knows when a denim shark needs to be made on demand.

Know how to make a type A girl happy? Build her some closet shelves when she is at work. Thanks honey.

At long last – storage! Our bathroom closet got ripped out to become a door way, so for the last oh five (?) months, all our bathroom closet stuff has been sitting in our master closet on the floor. We can’t use our master closet because of some work they were doing/we haven’t rebuilt the bars and stuff, so the floor seemed like a great place for oh…everything.

It was movie night, but I was so excited to get to organizing (nerd alert) that I went and started moving in to the new space as soon as I was done with my popcorn. Man oh man, it felt GREAT to be putting things in bins, and pulling extra towels and sheets out from under the bed.

We had all the bins hanging around in various places, so other than the brackets and the lumber, the re-org was free. That bottom shelf is really high, so that we can store our vacuum there. It folds in half, so Troy measured it to rest right above the vacuum. As a result of the height, we can stack three packages of toilet paper on top of each other. That is almost 1.5 huge Costco things of you see below.

I swear I’m not bragging to our East Coast friends, but Monday, President’s Day was insane. INSANE. Flowering trees that usually start in mid-March are in full bloom, and I was in a t-shirt outside for almost six hours working in the yard. My to-do list was long, but my enthusiasm to be outside was overpowering. From 9 am ish to 2:30 pm ish, I:

Had so much fun, I mowed the neighbor’s lawn too. They are both older ladies (mother and daughter), and I figured I had the machine out, it was a gorgeous day, and why the hell not.

Weeded ourthree giant raised beds by the street. They were a hot mess. The garlic box (sounds like a vampire revenge porn, yes?) needed some serious weeding, and the other two boxes needed to be weeded and have all the soil turned over so I could…

Reinstall our trellises and plant peas! I initially typed that as pees. Delish.

Plant the first planting of radishes and beets. I’ll do another planting probably next weekend so they’re staggered. I’m terrible at staggering plants so I get A LOT of radishes all at once, and then in a week they’re gone.

Planted all our spring/summer seed for growing inside under the grow lights. These are things like tomatoes, spinach, chard, kale (even though I have a 5 ft tall kale “tree” still in the garden) and lettuce.

Cleaned out the chicken coop.

General weeding and clean up.

I took a shower, did some in-house cleaning, and then cooked dinner. I sat down to eat dinner, and when I was done, I found myself stuck in my seat. As in, I had zero energy to get out of my chair. I had never felt “old” until that moment. And that evening, I realized why I was so damn tired:

I’m going to plant carrots outside next week using “grow tape” because carrot seeds piss me off so much that I just chuck them and yell “grow damn it”. And then I have the audacity to complain later in the season “well, I guess carrots just don’t do well in my garden”. Lies.

I received a wonderful surprise gift last week from my friend Anne. She found these before last Christmas and meant to save them as my birthday gift (October), but couldn’t wait and they became a Valentines gift. I love them’ they’re so amazing!

If you can’t read the photo, the bag on the left says “Shut your lid and can it” and the bag on the right says “Ain’t no thing but a chicken wing”.

While I was cooking dinner the other night, Troy and Jack were doing this. How do men still control this world?

I was driving home the other night and I saw a Mini Cooper with the license plate “Minilvr”. Um…I guess there is something to be said for truth in advertising, no?

Meal plan time! Just a reminder that I only plan our dinners for the week. For breakfast we tend to eat the same things (homemade Greek yogurt for me, a sandwich for Troy, and whatever Jack’s heart happens to desire that morning), and lunches for the grown ups are leftovers of what we had for dinner the night before.

This week I spent so much money, I want to weep. $14.50 at the farm for raw milk and honey, $17.82 at our local butcher for a huge pork butt (hee), $49.12 at the grocery store, and $547.34 at Costco. You read it. Did I stutter? Yeah, that much.

To be fair, it included toilet paper and my Vitamix!!!! Last week, we were at Costco and saw there was a $25 instant rebate on the blender I have been saving up to buy for almost six months (saving a little each paycheck, and combining it with our yearly Costco AMEX rebate). I was so excited. You can imagine my dismay when I went today to see that model was gone. I talked with a clerk and they said they sent them all back two days ago to make room for a different model…which was $50 more. BALLS. I still got it, but it took a bit of the pep out of my step.

Didn’t stop me from making the smoothest batch of hummus ever when I got home though!

18 comments on “Meal plan for February 23rd – March 1st”

Yep, Costco will get ya every time! I want to make hummus, but I need to figure out the best (a.k.a. cost effective) blender/processor to buy. I, as we all, live on a (single) budget and this will be my first attempt at hummus, and just plain old vegetable and herb gardening from which I plan to make, create, freeze and can as much as I am able to on my small dirt plot. I am originally from the great (frozen) state of Minnesota so planning a garden in mid-February is just downright crazy talk. I will come around to the “west coast” way of thinking soon enough I suppose, but meanwhile I get a giggle outta the weather and west coast ways. February planting, who knew? HA…Thanks for the wonderful blog posts, LOVE ‘EM (newly arrived Oregon Fan)

So, not sure if you’re on the west side of OR or the east side, but if you’re west side, you’re probably in a similar “zone” as me for planting. Here is my timeline for planting that has never once failed me:
President’s day: peas (but they usually won’t start really doing much until the end of March
St. Patrick’s day: potatoes
Mother’s day: everything else (tomatoes, squash, cukes, etc.

Some of the summer stuff planted around Mother’s Day takes awhile to grow much depending on the year, but it always does grow eventually.

Hi! I know what you mean about the closet space. It’s so satisfying to be able to put things in their proper place. My garage bothers me every morning because last year’s garden stuff is still shoved in the corners. When I finally get around to buying some black plastic shelves for it all, it will be a very good day.

It’s still snow covered in Alberta, so way too early to think about planting outside but I started all my tomato, chili, artichoke and flower seeds last week. I’m so happy to have things growing in the house again!

Costco is so dangerous, I agree. A friend of mine warned me years ago when she first took me there on her membership, “You never get out of Costco with less than $300 of stuff you didn’t know you needed.”. She’s been mostly right. A couple of weeks ago I walked in and had a light blinding, angels singing moment in front of the Ninja smoothie/blender/processor stand. It also didn’t help that as I was wiping some drool from my chin, a lady tapped me and said she bought one last week and loved it. Well, if that isn’t a sign then I don’t know what is.

I had a cheap blender before, but my Ninja has already made so many 10 second breakfast smoothies that it’s paid for itself. I’ve also lusted after a food processor for years but couldn’t justify the cost and space but now I’ve made hummous numerous times in my Ninja. This may be the best $170 I’ve ever spent.

I’m in Vancouver, BC, and the cherries have all started blossoming here. It’s freaky!! Way too soon for this. Yesterday we had my son’s entire soccer team and parents over for an end of season wind-up party, and it was so nice out, the whole thing was held outdoors in the backyard! In February!

FYI….I make the same fish marinade as you. I’ve found that it freezes beautifully. So what I do is buy a bottle of wine suitable for the marinade at a good price point, then wait till cilantro goes on sale, and I make up an amount that uses the whole bottle of wine. Then I freeze it in little containers (you can use ice cube trays too) so that it’s ready to go during the week when I’m crazy-busy trying to get dinner made.

Yup! Just had it on flank steak last night, and it was YUM. The kids loved it. We had 2/3 of a bottle of white wine left over from a dinner party, and I made it all up into marinade last night. I think I’ll use it again tonight on fish.
I haven’t tried it on veggies yet, but I think it would be good on grilled or stir fried peppers or green things.
Yay for batch cooking!

Yup! We had it on flank steak last night, and it was YUM. I’m going to use the leftovers on fish tonight. We had 2/3 bottle of white wine leftover from a dinner party, so I made it all into the marinade.
I think it would be good on grilled veggies or on sautéed green veg, too.

My blender died last year so I’m considering a replacement–but I think I really want a food processor. We moved five years ago and I accidently left three of them (different sizes) behind because I had the fl and couldn’t think! Wahhh! I used those things constantly, especially when I needed to chop things. I hate chopping and tend to slice things when I do, that don’t need to be mixed in with the food stuff, like some of my fingers. I also left my slow cooker and I miss it more.

Can’t believe I haven’t replaced these things yet–but this is the year. Oh, two of the processors were thrift store rejects that worked great for me, and the other was a trail on from Wally. It’s amazing how some of those things last at times. My hand mixers die right away, but I just use them for whipping stuff and when I don’t want to use the kitchen aide. Our toaster died too, but it was truly ancient, before wide slots for bagels, and I really loved it. I bought one from Amazon but it is awful, not worth replacing but next time I will read the reviews and spend a little more money!

Isn’t the weather crazy? Our birds are singing their heads off and making little birds and nests for them, and I’m thinking about packing up some of the winter clothes (which may be asking for more snow).

Oh man, I’m sad for you for leaving your FP behind; I use mine at least three times a week! That being said, I use my blender and FP for very different reasons and tasks. I hope you can find two great thrift store finds soon!

I’ll take this kind of crazy weather vs. what my friend in Connecticut is going through. While I love snow, that is crazy snow. I do think we’ll have a drought this summer though.

Yeah, I figure summer is going to be miserable again, and I’m worried about the fires being bad, also. I could hardly go outside at all when the Carlton Complex was so bad, among others. We had to shut the house up because of the heat anyway, and run the AC, but the smoke blowing around meant I couldn’t go out if I wanted to breathe easily! I think that’s the worst summer I remember in the 15 years we’ve lived here.

It was over 80 degrees in Central Florida today! I sat outside on my back patio to eat lunch and read my library book 🙂 Butterflies were fluttering among my flowers, bees were collecting pollen, birds were chirping, it was delightful! This past week I harvested Roma tomatoes, Bibb lettuce, jalapeños and a head of lettuce before we had a couple of nights with freezing temperatures.
I’m horrible at staggering my plantings as well. I plan to stagger but then I get lazy or my veggies don’t even grow properly (I’ve had this problem this winter because it’s been so hot in Florida up until last month, that most of the winter plantings either bolted or just didn’t grow). I just ran out of lettuce and the seeds that I had planted in an effort to stagger it just didn’t grow… so now I have to buy lettuce. I’ll try to plant more this week though.
I posted my weekly menu here: http://imperfectlyfrugally.blogspot.com/2015/02/in-my-fridge-dinner-plans.html I’m mostly using ingredients that I already have on hand, with a few things that I’ll pick up at Aldi on Wednesday.

I LURRRVE Aldi’s! They always have such beautiful produce and for such excellent prices. We gave up trying to grow anything on our place years ago (we have several black walnut trees) so it is really great to have a source for lots of fresh veggies. Plus, their dairy products are hormone/anti-biotic free.

Illinois is jealous of your weather! Congrats on your good fortune and warm weather. You will not regret your Vitamix purchase. I have used mine to make your hummus recipe (absolutely the best! With requests for the recipe each time, by the way.), smoothies, salsa, my own peanut butter, and so many other things. Enjoy it!